The revolution of 2010

October 25, 2009

Scott Stantis Chicago Tribune cartoonist

Some people eager to open presents scribble daily X's on the calendar as their birthdays approach. Not us. Since mid-2008, we've instead been marking the passage of time until the Feb. 2 Illinois primary. And now, voters, this is it: Your state is a fast 100-day campaign from the election in which you can start to reclaim your governments from political abuse and neglect.

Nothing in this state will change, though, unless citizens use this time well. We need to demand more from candidates who want to be our state lawmakers and, in derelict governments such as Cook County's, from candidates for local offices as well.

This, then, is a call to arms. At the end of these 100 days, we vote. We can join as one citizenry, in homage to Benjamin Franklin's iconic 1754 cartoon urging the American colonies to unite. Or we can continue to mourn the inadequate quality of governance that, until now, we've routinely accepted in Illinois.

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The need for Illinois voters to insist -- beginning with this primary election -- on less timid, less self-preservationist, more solutions-oriented leadership could not be more paramount:

-- Too many incumbents enable the Illinois culture of political sleaze that continues to suffuse so many layers of government in this state. Even with one defrocked governor in prison and another awaiting trial, clout still drives decisions on whom governments hire and how they spend taxpayers' dollars. The endurance of that culture has all but destroyed public confidence in Illinois' political class. Ruling oligarchs, fed with campaign donations from the beneficiaries of their largesse, want primarily to extend their power. You know their names. And you know their stranglehold on any proposed ethics reform that would substantially tilt that power back to citizens.

-- The current generation of state lawmakers also contemplates the abyss of debt Illinois has excavated for itself and . . . only digs deeper. State government progressively approaches the "financial implosion" famously predicted three years ago by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago. For lack of stiff spines in Springfield, the unfunded liability of state pension funds alone now totals some $80 billion. State retiree health obligations? Another horrorfest. And every day these unmet obligations only grow. Republican and Democratic governors alike have approved budgets that don't bother to pay for many of today's costs -- chiefly pensions and other benefits for state employees -- with today's revenues. Short on cash? No need to live within Illinois' means, Springfield repeatedly has intoned. Let's just delay paying overdue bills. Or borrow billions. Or both!

-- With unemployment rising and job creation lagging, Illinois needs to abandon its chronic denial and engage a question posed last month by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation of Washington, D.C: "Which states are best for business?" The group's "2010 State Business Tax Climate Index" ranks Illinois at 30th among the states by this crucial measure. The response of too many Democratic officials at state and local governments in Illinois? Gee, what taxes can we raise to drive away more employers and workers -- because you can't possibly ask us to change how, and how much, we spend.

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Starting Monday, and for the next week, candidates will file their petitions to get their names on the primary ballot. The Tribune editorial board then will deluge them with questionnaires. Voters will be able to see all of the answers as well as other materials we're developing so they can determine who stands for a better Illinois and who stands for the no longer tolerable status quo. We'll explain much more in coming days and weeks about how you can access this wealth of information.

We'll also apply all of that information, and the priorities detailed in this editorial, to determine which candidates we can recommend to voters. This will be the most deeply involved endorsement process we have ever undertaken.

The 2010 election cycle carries a special responsibility for incumbents. Many of them have spent years failing to change the political culture, failing to demand spending reforms, failing to tailor tax policy to a worsening jobs climate. In Springfield, the tendency instead has been for lawmakers to think on these grave imperatives and then ... to obediently do whatever the leaders of their party caucuses tell them to do.

Rod Blagojevich, scapegoat for every Illinois pol who wants to deflect this blame, didn't cause all that's so wrong with this state. The arc of his saga -- failed leader, accused criminal, relentless self-excuser -- has, though, crystallized the need for all of us to put a better group of leaders in charge of the people's business.

Over the next 100 days, we at the Tribune will do all we can to detail why the 2010 election cycle is so important -- and to determine which candidates appear likeliest to deliver a new and better Illinois.

The people of Illinois then will determine, come Feb. 2 and in the Nov. 2 general election, whether "The Revolution of 2010" is just a catchy phrase -- or an ode to the year energized voters change Illinois.